This week we featured research on self-employment, forced displacement, anti-corruption campaigns and more!
On Monday October 27th (13:00 UK), Cesi Cruz and Horacio Larreguy will outline the key takeaways for policy from their forthcoming VoxDevLit on the causes and consequences of political polarisation. Register here.
Valuing the time of the self-employed is crucial for evaluating interventions and conducting cost-benefit analysis. Yet research often misprices this value at zero or equal to market wages. Daniel Agness, Travis Baseler, Sylvain Chassang, Pascaline Dupas, and Erik Snowberg present new evidence from Kenya that suggests a practical fix: value unpaid self-employed labour at 60% of the local market wage.
Gerhard Toews and Pierre-Louis Vézina explore how Stalin’s forced deportation of educated ‘enemies of the people’ inadvertently concentrated human capital in Gulag towns, fostering inter-generational prosperity and long-term development despite the destructive intent of the repression.
Anti-corruption campaigns – such as Brazil’s Lava Jato – can reduce corruption but may also trigger significant unintended economic costs – disrupting credit markets while reducing employment and wage bills across both targeted and non-targeted firms. Claudio Ferraz, Luiz Moura, Lars Norden, and Ricardo Schechtman explain.
In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian discuss their recent book A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey. The conversation explores how India’s economic, political, and social transformation since its independence defies conventional models of development – from democracy’s double-edged role to the balance between state power and market freedom.
Ellen McCullough, Thomas Assefa, and Guush Berhane examine how Ethiopia’s fertiliser blending initiative shifted farmers to new products but failed to boost yields or incomes – underscoring that fertiliser supply reforms must be paired with broader investments in seeds, water, soils, and markets to raise productivity.
Rithika Kumar finds that male internal migration in India expands women’s roles and increases their political engagement by easing day-to-day restrictions even in the absence of their financial empowerment.
Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, Hyunseob Kim, and John Zhu outline evidence on Ethiopia which suggests that while part-time jobs broaden access for workers needing flexibility, they attract lower-skill applicants and reduce productivity, helping explain part-time wage penalties and gender pay gaps.
International sanctions are used as a powerful tool of statecraft, but their broader societal consequences are often overlooked. Since 2012, comprehensive sanctions on Iran have drastically eroded its middle class, undoing decades of social progress and undermining a key engine of economic stability and political moderation. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan and Nader Habibi discuss.
Hélène Donnat Gonzalez Holguera and Caleb Andreason reflect on the 4th Association for Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) Summer School, co-hosted with the African School of Economics and Africa Urban Lab.
Elsewhere in development:
- Ken Opalo on the geopolitics of international development (after foreign aid).
- Simon van Teutem on why life expectancy in Africa is lower than on other continents.
- Shona Warren, Rose Worden, and Helen Dempster on why donors must shift how they fund the UN.
- David McKenzie invites PhD students to write about their job market paper for the Development Impact blog.
- The Harris Social Impact Fellowship invites recent graduates and early career professionals to apply for its inaugural cohort.